


Helping Goes Both Ways

by CatKing_Catkin



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Bonding, Caretaking, Character Development, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Human!Cole, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Learning to be Human, Parent-Child Relationship, Sickfic, Talking, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 15:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3138608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatKing_Catkin/pseuds/CatKing_Catkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What about when you're injured? Why do you bleed? Is it because you think you have to?"</p><p>"Is that why you bleed?"</p><p>Encouraged to become more human, Cole has tried to make a bigger place in himself for human feelings and human habits. Unfortunately, a couple of them - like the need to eat, sleep, and not run himself ragged - finally catch up with him. Fortunately, an increased visibility to the world around him and the people in it means that he has friends to find him when he falls ill, friends to find him and pick him up and explain to him what's happening. </p><p>And while being sick is no fun, Cole wouldn't trade where he is now for the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Helping Goes Both Ways

Someone was in pain.

Someone was in pain and he couldn't find them, he couldn't find them, he couldn't couldn't couldn't _couldn't_. No matter how he walked and turned and looked, they always felt like they were just behind him or peering over his shoulder, except when he looked there was no one there. He clambered up ladders into the Skyhold's lofts and balconies, he clambered down ladders into kitchens and basements. But there was no one there who needed help. Or, there were, there were always people with aches and pains in their hearts, sometimes so deep that even they didn't know they were there even as they smothered on them.

But they didn't need help like this person needed help. Their pain was growing by the second, hurting and hungry and hot. Still, Cole felt bad for passing by everyone else. People gave him strange looks as he passed by, worried looks, and he was sure they must feel upset that he wasn't stopping to help. With what, he wasn't certain. It was hard to feel other people, this pain was so intense, and that was dizzying, disorienting, dreadful. It was like he was blind or deaf or voiceless, or something important had been hollowed out inside him and he'd dropped it somewhere.

He was sure they must need something. People usually did, with their desperately delightful tangle of emotion and thoughts and fears.

"Sorry," he murmured, or thought he did, before weaving away in a new direction. "I'll be back. Sorry. I want to help." He sounded blurry. He felt blurry. Everything looked blurry around him, soft edges and soft colors that were secretly sharp, waiting to slice the unwary.

Someone was grabbing on to his sleeve. It took Cole several seconds to realize this, and he only did when his feet apologetically reported that it was even harder to move forward now and could he please see what else was slowing them down? Someone was holding on. Someone nearby, just behind him. Cole's heart skipped a beat with relief and delight, and he looked round and then down and it was Varric, looking back up at him.

Varric was speaking, or Cole thought he was. His mouth was moving, and that usually meant speaking. Yet Cole couldn't hear any words from him. Maybe he really was deaf, it would make sense, this pain was _just that loud_ , but he'd looked around and someone was here this time, so it must be okay now.

"Varric?" he asked, or thought he did. "Are you all right? What is it? What do you…?"

He tried to listen. He tried to focus on what the pain was really saying, not just the fact of its existence, though its existence was loud enough. There was Varric's voice, yes, Varric's thoughts - _found him, finally. Shit, the cook wasn't kidding, he looks like hell, how did we let him get this bad? Where has he been, what has he been doing? I was supposed to keep an eye on him, damn, damn..._

Yet for this deeper, darker, doleful pain, there were no words of reason, just urges and instincts and hungers and fears, _what is this feeling, I don't understand, I don't know the words the words aren't coming I don't know how to fix it what's wrong help me_. And Cole wanted to reach out and hold their hand and tell them _it's okay, I don't understand, either, we can figure it out together_ , and then he realized dimly that this wasn't Varric's voice in pain, it was...

"I'm..."

His feet were very sorry, but the rest of him was just a little too heavy right now. His knees protested their forcibly reintroduction to the ground, as did his head. Cole was very sorry about that, but somehow, standing up just seemed like too much trouble right now. Everything was too much trouble compared to this pain, why couldn't he find them, where were they?

There were hands on him, touching and testing and tender. Pushing his hair out of his eyes, feeling his forehead, lifting him up a little so he was leaning against the wall and the world wasn't pitched and twisted at all the wrong angles. The pain rejoiced and eased at the contact, a knot coming a little more loose in his chest - _yes, help me, I don't understand, don't leave me..._

 _Oh._ Cole laughed, and then he coughed, and his chest hurt so very much. Yet then he laughed some more, because he _understood_ , at last, and that was wonderful and awful and so very, very _human_.

Varric was looking at him strangely. _Shit, what's the matter now? Did he hit his head, or is this fever so bad that's starting to bake his brain? Shit, I can't carry him, can I leave him to go get Solas, maybe Dorian?_

"No, it's all right," Cole said out loud, even though he wasn't supposed to do that anymore. He was supposed to wait for people to speak, acknowledge the shape their mouths made and not the echoes in their heads. _You're not being human, Cole, Varric will be disappointed._ And it wasn't very human to smile when you'd disappointed someone, but he couldn't help it, because he'd been so worried and now it turned out it was all okay!

"Don't you see?" Cole asked, still giggling a little. Varric was holding his hand, and Cole held it back happily. "I understand now, I finally understand! I've been looking for me this entire time, and I've finally found me!"

He was so relieved, so happy, and there were shadows eating at the edges of his eyes. Varric was speaking and Varric sounded so afraid: "Kid, hey! Come on, stay with me, don't do this!" And Cole wanted to help, but he couldn't see he couldn't hear he couldn't speak he couldn't touch, and he couldn't be much help like that.

Cole tried to apologize, but the words fell like spiders rather than butterflies. He hoped Varric understood. Varric was good with words, far better than Cole would ever be.

It wasn't sleep, what happened next. But it was better than staying awake any longer.

* * *

Cole awoke to murmurs, inside and out. He awoke to soft and warm and cold and hollow.

He also awoke to a bare head. So the first thing he did, the very first thing, was reach out with fumbling fingers to try and find where his hat had fallen.

Two voices. "He's awake!" Varric. Cassandra. No hat.

"Where's my hat?" Cole asked. His voice didn't sound like his voice. His voice didn't sound like much of a voice at all. He was staring at the point where his hand was fumbling and scuttling clumsily over the bedsheets like a pale spider, seeking yet not finding.

"In the wash," said Cassandra with her usual huff. "There was _moss_."

Cole frowned. That didn't seem right at all. Still, he let his hand fall still. "But how will it know it's my hat when it comes back?"

"I'm sure you'll figure something out, kid," said Varric, soothing not just him but her.

Cole looked up, and there they were, two bright blurs limned in candlelight near the edge of the bed. Whose bed? His bed? He didn't have a bed. Hadn't really needed one, before now. Wasn't sure why he needed one now.

Varric's expression was soft, but there was something sharp beneath. No, not sharp. Broken, jagged, slicing the dwarf up inside with every breath. _Thank the Maker, if he's listening. Poor kid still looks like hell, though. Almost reminds me of Junior, looking like that, when the Taint caught up with him. Or Daisy, when she stopped going outside..._

Cassandra's thoughts were no less concerned, though they were also the inverse of Varric's. Sharp sternness shielding soft frets fluttering beneath. He could almost hear her click her tongue in her thoughts. _Light as a bird, pale as a sheet, hot as a furnace. Wasn't he supposed to be getting more noticeable? But we didn't know he could get sick. Spirits aren't supposed to get sick. None of us know what this means, I'm not certain he does, either..._

Varric squeezed his hand a little more tightly, a gentle reminder, and Cole understood that he must have said some of their thoughts out loud. Without meaning to, of course. He'd been getting better about that. But when he couldn't even stand, how could he be expected to stay silent?

People didn't like that. It worried them, bothered them, and Cole did not want to bother anyone. Anyone who didn't deserve it, at least. Most people didn't. It was fine to see and know, but not to say. That was one of the oddest things about people. Spirits didn't have an inside and an outside, just a self that was all and one.

People were more interesting. More satisfying. Spirits _were_. People felt and thought and _did_. Spirits were whole by design. People _needed_.

His gaze refocused. Cassandra was looking away, and her gaze was drawn tight shut. Varric was looking at him, and his gaze was old and sad. Without meaning to, his thumb was stroking a path back and forth over the back of Cole's hand. Back, forth, back, forth, leaving a memory and more than a memory of warmth. Cole found himself focusing on that almost as much as he did on the pain of his friends. After all, everything still felt...dull, compared to the hurt that he now knew was inside him.

"I don't know," he finally said out loud. "Didn't know. But I think I am. Sick. I have felt this before." _The drops of water catch the light as they trickle down from the cloth, back into the bowl to wait for when they're truly needed. The pillows and blankets hold a shadow soaked in sweat. They beg for water, they bake and boil and break._

_In delirium, they call out for mothers, father, sisters, friends, and don't even think to question when Cole takes on their voices and faces just long enough to murmur reassurances to ease the hurts._

"I've just never felt it inside. Am I going to die?"

"No," said Varric and Cassandra at the same moment, too hastily for him to believe that they hadn't been worrying even if he couldn't feel the worry like another layer of blanket. Soft and too warm.

"Best we can tell, you just wore yourself down, kid," Varric continued on. "Too much running around..."

"In tattered clothes," Cassandra interjected.

"Not enough sleep..."

"And no bed to sleep in."

"Or food..."

"Ever, as far as we can tell."

Nothing about this should have been funny, but Cole laughed in any case. He immediately wished he hadn't, because his chest protested most fiercely, seizing up inside, and the laugh choked in his throat and became a fit of coughs that tore through him sharp as any knife.

Hands that weren't his. Hands that fluttered like injured birds over shoulders and back, seeking safe purchase. Cup being held out so he didn't have to take it, with his clumsy hands that couldn't even find his hat. No choice but to trust, and when he obediently parted his lips his trust was rewarded with water.

It was a scene he'd lived through more times than once, but always from the other side of the bedside.

Strange. He'd never thought of water as a reward before. It was just a thing, a thing people needed, but he wasn't people so it didn't matter to him personally.

It mattered to him very much now, suddenly. Water was suddenly the most wonderful and important thing in the world, and Cole _moaned_ in satisfaction and _relief_ to suddenly find himself being given it. That was new, too, all of this was new. He wasn't supposed to take satisfaction from getting, only giving. Healing hurts required giving more, or sometimes encouraging those that carried the hurts to give away to others. But not to him, never to him. He just watched and smiled and _helped_.

"Don't make him sick, Varric," Cassandra scolded, and Cole frowned when the cup was taken away. On a wild whim, he found himself opening his mouth, only realizing after he had that the urge he was feeling was to protest. But Cassandra looked down at him as he accidentally croaked like a frog instead. A little of the fretting peeked out from behind the sternness. Cole was glad to see it. He was even more glad when she reached out to brush her hand over his forehead, smoothing back his bangs. His hair felt damp with sweat beneath her touch. "More in a moment, Cole. Just settle down for now."

Now he was being helped. Not just to make sure he didn't fall, to keep him fighting and going, but being helped when the fate of no one but himself was at stake. It wasn't that his traveling companions were cruel or thoughtless. He wouldn't have stayed with them if they were. It was just that they so rarely _saw_. Most people didn't. Hadn't.

"Oh," Cole murmured, settling down once more as instructed. "I understand, now."

He was sure, if he looked, that the sheets and pillows would hold his shadow in sweat. But he didn't particularly want to see, so he didn't look. His body felt heavy, clumsy, and cold. He felt like a corpse, in fact - he knew that with some exactness, remembering what he'd felt from the bodies in the bogs in the Fallow Mire.

Yet he didn't feel the need to devour the flesh of the living. There was still some sort of hollow emptiness inside him, but the water had eased it. He just felt the need to surrender to the demands that pulled all things down, except this time there was a pillow and a mattress between him and the ground. That was better, of course. Cole curled up small and safe, tugging the blankets around himself and up to his chin.

"What do you understand?" asked Cassandra, as Varric refilled the cup from a nearby jug.

"I decided to grow closer to this side. To you. To all of you. To finish the journey I began. So I could learn and grow and understand, not just see and know. _What a delightfully strange little scarecrow. His eyes are bright, his mind alight. Even he doesn't know if it's because this is a valuable experiment or a person he wants to know. It bothers him that he doesn't. But he asks, anyway, because he has never known when to turn aside. 'What about when you're injured? Why do you bleed? Is it because you think you have to?_ '"

"And now you've come far enough that you think you have to do things like eat and sleep and stay warm," Varric finished, nodding in comprehension.

They didn't ask him to answer until he had some more water. His friends were fast proving themselves kind like that, now that they could continue seeing him. Cole waited until he’d been given more water before answering. “I didn’t decide to start thinking that. The thoughts decided all on their own that it was time for them to start being thought. I made a place for them, like I made a place for everything else. I didn’t realize they’d filled it. That was impolite. They should have asked.”

“I’m afraid a lot of humanity is pretty impolite, kid.” Varric patted him softly on the shoulder “But it’s got its upsides.”

“So he should eat something,” Cassandra finished, chopping all the big problems down like great trees destined to become tavern tables.

“Looks like it. Let’s start him off small, though. See what kind of broth they’re cooking up for supper.”

And Cassandra – Seeker of Truth, staunch ally of the Inquisition, a woman of enough flame and faith to have drawn a spirit of it to herself – went off to check the kitchens without another word. She felt better to be doing something, so that was all right. Still, Cole watched her go with a little sadness, though he knew enough now not to ask what was on his mind until she'd closed the door behind him.

"Am I going to have to stay in bed?"

He didn't want to stay in bed, but he trusted Varric to tell him the truth about this sort of thing. Sure enough, Varric smiled in an apologetic sort of way, but nodded all the same.

"'Fraid so. Look at it this way - the better you do letting us fix you up, the less time you'll need to get fixed up."

"Do you think Cassandra would read to me some more while I do?" He hadn’t read the latest chapter of _Swords and Shields_ , except in Varric’s head. And that wasn’t the same thing.

"I think you look miserable and pathetic enough that she could probably be persuaded."

"I don't look like a threat?" Or was he the cat in this particular scenario, being coaxed out from under its chair?

"I've seen nugs that look more threatening than you do right now, Cole."

 _Cole_. It was his name, of course, or as good as his name. It echoed with strange harmonics on Varric's lips, however, making distorted ripples rather than the short, clean _splash_ of "kid". Varric was still worried about something, and now that his own pain was starting to dull, or at least become less overwhelmingly unfamiliar, Cole realized that it wasn't just about him being sick.

"Can I say what I see out loud? I know it bothers people, but my head hurts right now, and I think it would only hurt worse if I tried to keep it all inside."

"I wish you could turn it off." Varric frowned, but he still looked concerned more than disapproving, so Cole supposed he hadn't said anything immediately wrong by asking. "You need to focus on yourself right now. You don't always have to be on point to help people."

"Yes, I do."

"A couple of days isn't going to turn you into a demon, kid."

_"'But what will it turn him into? What have I gotten him into? I thought this would be better for him, but look at my track record making calls like that. Maybe I've forgotten what it's like not to look for the next great story. Maybe I've forgotten what it's like to see people just as they are. Maybe I broke him, like Hawke."_

Varric hadn't looked this... _wounded_ since the last time they'd run out of healing potions in Crestwood and Iron Bull had had to carry him back to camp. It made Cole's heart hurt to see, and even more to understand as he wasn't sure he ever could have before. Understanding pain, and not just seeing it, was a part of being human. There was no better way to understand than to _feel_.

Yet there was no better way to learn how to fix than to understand. So even if all is limbs felt weighted down with stones, Cole reached out a hand. Disregarding the way his fingers trembled, he managed to take a hold of the reassuringly solid cup with its reassuringly heavy contents. Varric only managed to pull himself together enough to try and help when Cole lifted the cup to his lips, and by then it turned out that he'd recovered just enough energy to manage on his own.

That surprised them both, really. What mattered, however, was that it made his point, clearer than any of Cole's words ever could. He saw it on Varric's face and read it in his heart.

"You haven't broken me, Varric," Cole finished simply. The words came easier after water. Perhaps it was his reward for seeing to the needs of his body. He really would have to try and make it a point to do that more often. "I remember what it feels like to be broken. This isn't that. I...I think it might even be the opposite."

He laid there, turning the cup over and over in his hands for a long moment, waiting patiently for Varric to decide whether he was going to laugh or cry. In the end, even Varric didn't know which until he'd actually sighed and it turned into a sob and then a laugh. When it did, he reached out to ruffle Cole's hair before carefully taking the cup from him and setting it back on the table.

"You really are something special, kid."

Cole didn't understand what he meant by that. Maybe he never would. But the words had the feel of fondness, that echo of blooming flowers that spoke of pain eased, if not yet healed. And somehow he thought that the old Cole would have been soothed beyond measure to hear them. At the least, he knew to take the quieting of murmurs from Varric's heart as a positive sign. So it felt safe, it felt right, to smile happily in reply.

Cassandra chose that moment to return, bearing a bowl and a spoon. The smell of it made the emptiness inside Cole gurgle and growl. Hungry, he told himself. _You’re hungry. You’ve felt this before. A blanket, food, sleep. Another hurt to be healed. You’ve felt this before, but always from the other side._

“I ran into the Inquisitor on my way back,” Cassandra said without preamble, moving again to join them by the bedside. When Cole sat up held out his hands for the bowl, she hesitated a moment, but then passed it over to him. Her hands lingered a moment over his, testing until she was satisfied and sure that his grip would stay steady. Once she was, she stepped back and pulled out the chair by the desk in the room. He wondered again whose room this was.

“Oh?” asked Varric. “And what did our fearless leader have to say about the situation?”

“That she would hopefully return in a few days with more dragonbone. And to pass along to Cole her best wishes for his recovery. Iron Bull and Solas have said the same.”

“Wasn’t Sera going with them?”

“Yes. If you must know, she passed along her desire for Cole to get better before she returns, because she does not want to catch whatever he has.”

Yet she was still calling him “him” even when he wasn’t around, and to Cole, that was what mattered most. That was what made him smile.

There was soup in the bowl. It was clear and smelled faintly of barley, with a few pieces of noodles and vegetables floating beneath like fish in a pond. He knew how to eat, of course. Or at least, he knew the motions to go through. But was it really that simple?

Varric and Cassandra were nearby, however, in easily accessible arm’s reach. While they were chatting away easily to each other – _sometimes it’s so hard to remember how we met, and then I do and take care to stay out of reach_ – he trusted that they were also keeping an eye on him. So if he did something wrong, they would tell him, correct him, show him yet another way to be.

Feeling like a man balancing on the edge of the world, Cole dipped his spoon into the bowl, filled it up, brought it to his lips, and slurped the contents down. Varric and Cassandra were pretending not to watch him, pretending to be engrossed in their own conversations, but they weren’t doing a very good job of it.

Varric’s resolve broke first. “So…how is it?”

The only truly accurate answer would be to take another spoonful. Which he did. It was just as good as the first. Maybe even better, after the initial shock of _taste_ wore off.

Either way, some of the tension bled out of the room as all three of them, audibly or not, let out a breath of relief.

“Whose room is this?” he remembered to ask at last.

“Nobody’s at the moment,” said Varric. “Are you kidding? This place is massive, and we’re only excavating more of it by the day. But we’re in the fortress proper, if you’re wondering.”

“It could be yours’, if you chose,” Cassandra added carefully. “It’s clear enough to me that you will at least need a bed in future.”

Cole nodded thoughtfully, and then shook his head. “Is there any room in the tavern still?”

“Besides the attic? I’m sure we could find some.” Varric waved a hand as though to bat the problem aside like an errant fly.

“I think I would like to stay there. Properly. More people. More voices. More helping.”

“Sure thing, kid. I’ll talk to the innkeeper about it. In the meantime, hey, Seeker, Cole wanted to ask you something.”

“Cole?”

“Am I going to have to stay in bed?”

“For a couple of days, at least. That would be safest. Those of us in the Inquisitor’s inner circle who have remained will take turns…keeping an eye on you.” _Watching over you_ , she meant. The words echoed in the space left for them but left empty by her hesitation. She didn’t say the words because it was supposed to be the other way around, with spirits. That was how it had always worked, in Cassandra’s life, and now it wasn’t. She was doing her best to adjust, however, just as he was.

“That’s all right. Thank you. I only wanted to ask…while you’re here, will you read to me some more?”

Cassandra sputtered and blushed, her gaze snapping immediately to Varric, who was grinning like a well-fed cat. “ _Cole_ ,” she said, scolding and scared for them to see.

“Don’t look at him, Seeker,” Varric said, holding up a hand. “I already heard all about it from the Inquisitor.”

“I haven’t read the new chapter. You told me to stay out of your rooms, and I have. But you’re excited about it, and I want to be excited, too.” Wait. There was something he was missing. Something he was forgetting. Another spoonful of soup, and it came to him. Ah, yes. “Please?”

Cassandra settled, softened, though she tried not to show it. And her heels remained just a little bit dug in, because she was a Seeker and not one to back down lightly. “Perhaps Varric…”

“You give them better voices.”

Varric burst out laughing. When Cassandra rounded on him, frowning fiercely, he held up his hands in a gesture of peace instead. “What? He’s probably right. Honestly, Seeker, I know you have a reputation to maintain. Your secret’s safe with me.” Showing her, reminding her, that he was not a threat. And if she did not jump up into his lap and start purring, she at least resigned herself to batting at his feet instead.

“Perhaps later,” she said carefully, the blush already starting to fade from her cheeks. Cole knew, however, that she meant “yes later”, because that was always how she’d answered his requests to read to him before. “After you have eaten. And rested.”

Ah. Sleep. Would he have to sleep now? Cole wasn’t sure he liked that idea as much as he liked the idea of soup. Or the fact of soup, for that matter.

He didn’t find the words to say as much until Cassandra had already left to contend with yet more of the day to day difficulties that came from helping run a fortress, sick spirits aside. Varric stayed, however, and Cole was glad of this, on his own behalf and on the dwarf’s.

“What if I get lost in the Fade again?”

“Non-dwarfs seem to do it every night, and they always find their way back. It can’t be _that_ hard…but beyond that, I couldn’t tell you what to expect, kid.” When Cole still looked as reluctant to lay down again as he felt, Varric’s expression softened, and he reached out to hold Cole’s hand for a moment. Cole didn’t think he’d ever told Varric just why he liked that so much, but Varric had obviously figured it out anyway. You didn’t always need to be a spirit, to see into people’s heads and hearts.

“Just another adventure in this grand mess called existence. It’s just not one I can walk you through this time. And it won’t be the last. But even if I can’t tell you what you’re getting into…I think I can say with some confidence what you’ll be coming back to.”

Friends. Freedom. Hurt. Healing. Seeing. Soup. Voices.

Maybe his hat would even be out of the wash by then.

Satisfied and soothed, Cole settled himself down on the bed again, curled up beneath the covers, and closed his eyes.


End file.
